


The Hunter and The Hunted

by zarabithia



Category: Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-25 07:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1639793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zarabithia/pseuds/zarabithia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Choosing between her Wolf and her soldier was never an option she was given.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Hunter and The Hunted

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Iuile

 

 

When they married, she was the envy of the entire village that she had called home for seventeen short years. 

She remembered that day as clearly as any bride would their wedding day, though her memories were through a haze of weariness brought on by the five years that had passed since.

She remembered standing next to her husband to be, in a gown sewn by the same hands who had clipped her hair into place. 

She remembered promising to love, honor, and obey.

She remembered him making two of those three promises in return. With the hindsight of five years, she knew that he had never planned on keeping those two vows. It was surely impossible to love or honor someone and hurt them so badly at the same time.

But she had made her vow, and as her mother had reminded her as she drove away in that little carriage with her new husband, it was a lifelong commitment. There was no going back on the promise she had made. 

She was fortunate, at least, that he was gone for long stretches at a time. As the most decorated and talented of the King's army, he loaded up his guns and took his rage away, to dish upon other unfortunate souls who had never been so foolish as to promise their lives away to him. 

While he was gone, she contented herself with keeping the house they'd inherited from her grandmother clean, and with weeding the vegetable garden she had planted in lieu of the flower garden he forbade her to have.

A wife of a general could not be frivolous, he'd informed her, allowing, as always, his fist to drive home his point when she'd been foolish enough to think it a desire worth arguing.

She was forbidden to make the trek back through the small woods and back into her old village while he was gone. It was too dangerous, her husband warned, and besides, there was nothing - and no one - that she needed.

Besides him.

Yet one day, a visitor made his way to her grandmother's house. A handsome salesman, whose long pony tail and large brown eyes poked out from beneath his cloak, showing an excitement that decried the monotony of his profession.

He was selling flower seeds, he explained, and the good villagers had pointed him in her direction, with the advice that she had plenty of good land to grow as many flowers as she liked. 

She could not buy his seeds, but he left after an inquiry of her favorites and he returned to her the next day carrying a large bouquet full of blood red roses.

He returned many times again, and her happiness at her husband's absence doubled as her enjoyment in his company grew. She nicknamed him Wolf, after the long hair that contrasted so sharply with her husband's close to the scalp cut.

That long hair, she discovered, was the perfect length for holding on to. She discovered this first as he bent to kiss her and she lifted her hands hesitantly into his hair. 

She discovered it again as he laid her onto her grandmother's quilt and loved her with a tenderness her husband had never shown, allowing her hands to guide his mouth where _she_ wished it to go. 

She discovered it a third time as his mouth turned savage and rough between her legs, in all ways that were delightful, and her hands could barely maintain a grip tight enough as her body bucked with pleasure that her body had never known before.

Her hands were caressing that mane back into place and slipping the hood over his head when her husband arrived home, two days earlier than his ship should have brought him.

Her Wolf did not have a gun, but her soldier did. 

Her lover's cloak grew wet with blood as her husband visited his punishment upon her. But he did not use his gun with her. He'd never needed a gun to hurt her, and as he reclaimed what the Wolf had taken, he proved that he still didn't.

She wondered if he would kill her, but after the body was disposed of, and he had laid down beside his wife, it was apparent that he was far more interested in making her pay repeatedly for her mistake.

Perhaps then, after a long drawn out punishment, he would kill her. 

Or perhaps she would not give him the chance. 

She did not know her way around a gun, but she did know her way around her grandmother's kitchen. She knew which knives were the sharpest and which ones could be carried by a woman who could barely walk.

A simple slice was all it took to end a life that had caused her so much torment. He did reach out and grab her wrist - but in that final few moments of life, his grasp was finally weak enough for her to pull free.

She buried her husband on the opposite side of her grandmother's lawn as her Wolf. In death, as in life, her husband would not know the sweet fragrance of the flowers she loved. 

But atop her Wolf's grave sat the brightest of the rose bushes she planted in her lawn, and there were many that competed for that honor, for her garden blossomed with new life after her husband's death.

 


End file.
